Republic. I like the sound of the word. It means people can live free, talk free, go or come, buy or sell, be drunk or sober, however they choose. Some words can give you a feeling that makes your heart warm. Republic is one of those words. - John Wayne

If the left and the media are to be believed, the outcome of the coming election will be decided by a razor-thin margin. But lately I have been asking myself why I should believe the self-serving suppositions of the left and the media. Is it possible that Bush could not only win, but win in a Reaganesque "landslide?"

I don't know. How does one define "landslide?" Is the term simply used to mean "by a margin large enough as to leave no possibility of doubt in the outcome?" Dictionary.com says "an overwhelming majority of votes," but this definition just begs the question of how we define "overwhelming" in terms of American electoral results.

Last time, Gore supposedly won the popular vote, while Bush got the neccessary number of votes in the electoral college, and Bush ended up as the guy in the White house. Therefore, I am forced to assume that the electoral votes are king, and whoever gets to 270 wins.

So I did a little Blog Culling, and what did I find? A handy-dandy website called Electoral-vote.com with a lovely interactive version of the graphic above. Basically the darker the blue, the more support there is for Kerry, and the darker the read, the more for Bush. If these folks are to be believed, recent polling in a state by state analysis leads to the following conclusion:

Kerry gets 242 Electoral VotesBush gets 280

Whoo Hoo! Bush Wins! But hey, is a 38 electoral vote spread sufficient to qualify as a landslide? Sounds like "an overwhelming majority of votes," "by a margin large enough as to leave no possibility of doubt in the outcome" to me.